Magic Lantern, Magic Realism: Italian writers and Dickens from the end of the Nineteenth century to the 1980s

The essay surveys Dickens's reception in Italy, with specific focus on those Italian auhtors who were inspired by his fiction. Among them the first was De Amicis, at the turn of the century; with Farina and in part Fogazzaro; children's literature soon inscribed Dickens among the authors who were considered beneficial and morally acceptable to an italian audience. But the first true acknowledgement of Dickens's art came from Cesare Pavese, and those Writers who shared the concept of magic realism. After Pavese, the essay focuses on Tomasi di Lampedusa, Italo Calvino, Dino Buzzati, Alberto Moravia, Pietro Citati, suggesting a whole genalogy of influence which stands upon the recognition of Dickens's art beyond the conventions of XIX c. realism, and well into the poetics of modernity -- known as magic realism.